Food and Life…Meanderings of a Woman of a Certain Age

Tag Archives: Rosh Hashanah

This week marks the start of the Jewish New Year — Rosh Hashanah, and with it another year of making food for festive family meals, a task I always look forward to with great relish (but not so much the cleaning part…oh how I wish the house cleaned itself.) I always make enough food for double the amount of people I invite, but the leftovers make the rest of the week a breeze at dinner.

My daughter’s favorite holiday dish is Coca Cola Brisket, not at all what our ancestors made in the old country, but Google it and you’ll find dozens of versions since this is a very popular dish. It’s sweet and savory. Many of the dishes for the Jewish New Year are sweet, as part of the tradition to eat sweet food in hopes of a sweet New Year. Often, a sweet carrot dish called Tsimmes is prepared, but we’ll be skipping that dish this year. Apples dipped in honey, Challah (a sweet egg bread with or without raisins) dipped in honey, honey cakes and fruits new for the season. Growing up, we often had pomegranate seeds.

For every holiday or dinner party, I make a mix of traditional favorites and new recipes. Along with the brisket, we’ll also be having Hungarian Chicken Paprikash (not at all traditional) with dumplings (called Nockerl), and a potato kugel. For starters we’ll have chicken soup with matzo balls, creamed mushroom stuffed phyllo shells, artichoke tarts, and a sweet salad with mandarin oranges and candied almonds. I’m going to try to duplicate Boston Market’s sauteed apples as well. (I said I always make enough food for an army and I meant it!)

This is a dish that tastes just as good reheated, so make plenty of leftovers.